Between all those Texans protesting the gay Jesus play and Big Poppa Ratz running the largest kiddie-sex ring ever, we’ve had Jesus on the brain recently. But we thought we’d share some good religious news for a change: every Jesus-loving person isn’t a hypocritical super-bigot! Case in point: V. Gene Robinson. The first openly gay Episcopalian bishop visited the Texas capitol last Sunday to discuss “the seven deadly” anti-LGBT Bible verses, your queer uncle Harold, and why the ancient Hebrews were so hardcore against gay love and monkey spanking. Says Robinson: “I believe the Bible to be the word of God, but not the words of God.”

The Bishop’s a charming and powerful speaker, so you’d do well to hear his entire speech in the pages that follow. But we also know you’re busy folks (and maybe not too big on church), so we’ve pulled the best quotes from his hour-long sermon and placed them in a handy video gallery for you!

“But we thought we’d share some good religious news for a change: every Jesus-loving person isn’t a hypocritical super-bigot!”

How sad that this can be considered news, even half tongue-in-cheek.

Mar 27, 2010 at 3:31 pm · @Reply ·

overit

The mere fact that the bile-bull distorts sexuality is enough to render it void. Case closed.

Mar 27, 2010 at 3:52 pm · @Reply ·

overit

On Jesus : If he did live it was two thousand years ago. Loving an ancient person is insanity.

Mar 27, 2010 at 3:56 pm · @Reply ·

terrwill

Thank you Bishop Robinson for far too long the rightwing lunatics have been cherry picking obscure verses in the Bible to spew their poo at the Gays. They demand everyone live the life described in the “good book” they neglect to mention all the little chestnuts Leviticus (the original control freak)
demand they adhere to:

Don’t let cattle graze with other kinds of Cattle (Leviticus 19:19)

Don’t have a variety of crops on the same field. (Leviticus 19:19)

Don’t wear clothes made of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19)

Don’t cut your hair nor shave. (Leviticus 19:27)

Any person who curseth his mother or father, must be killed. (Leviticus 20:9) Have you ever done that?

If a man cheats on his wife, or vise versa, both the man and the woman must die. (Leviticus 20:10). Be a whole lotta “For Rent” signs in DC

If a man sleeps with his wife and her mother they are all to be burnt to death. (Leviticus 20:19) half the deep South would be wiped out

If a man has sex with a woman on her period, they are both to be “cut off from their people” (Leviticus 20:18)

Psychics, wizards, and so on are to be stoned to death. (Leviticus 20:27)

If a priest’s daughter is a whore, she is to be burnt at the stake. (Leviticus 21:9)

People who have flat noses, or is blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God (Leviticus 21:17-18)

Anyone who curses or blasphemes God, should be stoned to death by the community. (Leviticus 24:14-16)

Don’t let cattle graze with other kinds of Cattle (Leviticus 19:19)

For bringing attention to the absolute hyprocicy of the right wing lunatic nutbags, I say Thank God for Bishop Robinson!
(that outta rub some sand in their vaginas……… : p)

Mar 27, 2010 at 6:45 pm · @Reply ·

mattresssaleanysizeonelowprice

@terrwill

i’ve often seen you comment and I have to say you’re one of a (good) kind !

Mar 27, 2010 at 7:28 pm · @Reply ·

B

No. 4 · terrwill wrote, “They demand everyone live the life described in the “good book” they neglect to mention all the little chestnuts Leviticus (the original control freak)
demand they adhere to.”

“Control freak” should be “control freaks” (plural) as Levicitus was not written by a single person. The “little chestnut” they
always neglect to mention is the last sentence in Leviticus, which says that the rules in it were for the “Israelites”, not anyone else. The history explains why.

The best guess is that Leviticus was written after the Babylonian exile. Cyrus, the emperor of Persia, had kicked the Babylonians’ collectives asses, and let exiled Jews return home and rebuild their temple (he did the same thing with a variety of other ethnic groups as well). He typically wanted a report telling him how they intended to set up shop. Cyrus would not be pleased if they said they were going to cause trouble with their neighbors, so of course their rules were to apply to them and them alone.

When the exiled Jews returned home, they found that those who had not been exiled were assimilating and taking up the religious customs of their neighbors. So, they acted like the Taliban and put in a series of arbitrary rules whose main function was to help undo the assimilation, with harsh penalties for anyone who did not get with the program (to use a current idiom). Their “pagan” neighbors performed fertility rites where male and female temple prostitutes would accept “offerings” on behalf of a fertility god, officially to ensure a good harvest but more likely because the pagan priests were all hot bottoms. Naturally, that sort of fun had to be banned because from a marketing perspective, competing against it was not easy.

QUEERTY someone dropped a comment I tried to post. The “scholarly consensus” is that Levicitus had multiple authors and was written at the end of the Babylonian exile. Jews were allowed to return home and rebuild their temple, and had to provide the Persian emperor Cyrus with a report describing how they planned to exercise this restored authority. Leviticus is basically that report – the (perhaps idealized) rules for running the temple.

Leviticus applies only to Jews (Israelites, specifically) and says so in its last sentence. It reads like something the Taliban would write because the returning priests wanted to reassert their authority – the Jews who avoided being exiled were assimilating into the culture they were embedded in and the returning rulers desperately wanted to undo that.

Mar 27, 2010 at 9:51 pm · @Reply ·

terrwill

@B: TYVM, Now it all makes perfect sense!! The rightwing lunatics would love nothing more than to impose a taliban regime on the United States. No wonder they have adopted leviticus as their poster-hate spewer…………..

Mar 27, 2010 at 10:07 pm · @Reply ·

Mike L.

I guess gays-for-pay are going to hell. lol j/k.

He’s so cool.

Mar 28, 2010 at 1:08 am · @Reply ·

jeffree

Here’s to you Mr. Robison………
If u put my parents in a car for a road trip u will hear James Taylor, Paul Simon, Carley Simon, & Simon and Garfunkle.

If you are raised by such parents then your first songs may include these here words, more or less:

“And Here’s to you Bishop Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you can know,
Oh Oh, Oh……”
Oh oh oh…

Sorry: that’s all I can remember. I say that out of respect, even if I don’t believe in religions.

OH: hint: do not *ever* attempt 2 crawl out of the car no matter how bad ur parents sing!

Mar 28, 2010 at 1:57 am · @Reply ·

B

No. 8 · terrwill wrote, “Now it all makes perfect sense!!” It gets even better. One contributing factor for the seemingly anti-gay passages in Leviticus is that the Israelites “pagan” neighbors had rituals involving temple prostitutes, both male and female, whom males would f___ as a way of offering “seed” to the gods to ensure a good harvest and other benefits. Given the part of their anatomy that most men think with, the returning Jewish priests had some serious competition in winning back those who were starting to assimilate. So it is not surprising that the returning priests would try a death threat to get assimilating Israelis to (figuratively) zip up their pants.

Then you have to consider Cyrus’ viewpoint. Persia is roughly centered on present day Iran and Babylon on present day Iraq. After you conquered someone, the custom at the time was to turn the vanquished into slaves, so they probably had a slave glut, which they solved by letting the exiles return home. By doing that, Cyrus ensured that Babylon would be surrounded by people who were eternally grateful to Cyrus, making a Babylonian revolt appear futile. It wouldn’t do to have the exiles (it wasn’t just Jews) fighting among themselves. So restricting Leviticus to the Israelites made sense – Cyrus would have been pissed if the Israelites claimed their religious rules applied to others because that would have created an unnecessary conflict.

Mar 28, 2010 at 2:29 am · @Reply ·

Carter

Excellent post, Queerty.

Nice to see some occasional serious journalism.

I like hot guys as much as the next person, but your endless parade of shaved, emaciated twinks is becoming tiresome.

Mar 28, 2010 at 11:00 am · @Reply ·

ewe

That tired old book needs an updated edition.

Mar 28, 2010 at 4:27 pm · @Reply ·

D.R.A.

Count me in as someone who adores this man. He’s so kind and intelligent. He has my respect.

Well, does the bible say anything at all about farmers f*cking sheep??

Mar 28, 2010 at 7:54 pm · @Reply ·

B

No. 15 · Peter wrote, “Well, does the bible say anything at all about farmers f*cking sheep??” … actually it does: Leviticus 18:23 (found easily via a google search, and the page I found quoted some ‘related’ passages), Exodus 22:19, Leviticus 20:15, Leviticus 20:16, and Deuteronomy 27:21. The rule is a general one forbidding sex between humans and other species.

In the case you mentioned, there’s a death penalty for both the farmer (whether male or female) and the sheep. It didn’t say whether it was OK to eat the sheep after you killed it, nor whether you could get some wool off of it first.

If there’s a spontaneous emission, and some kinky guy scoops up the fluid into a turkey baster and injects it into an animal, it is not clear what happens under the rules. But then, when this stuff was written, they didn’t have turkey basters.